Defining a sustainable BI strategy that leverages your current investments and aligns with SAP’s...

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Defining a Sustainable BI Strategy That Leverages Your Current Investments and Aligns with SAP’s BI Strategy and RoadmapLuc BoodtsExpertum

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In This Session

• As SAP’s BI strategy and roadmap evolve, adoption of new solutions requires a strategic view into your BI management

• Attend this session to: Hear key factors, such as business demands, architectural

complexity, and development considerations, that play a role in determining your organisation’s BI roadmap

Ensure your roadmap accounts for short-term requirements and remains valid for the long-term with a mixture of as many different deployment scenarios as possible

Evaluate possible roadmaps and criteria to define the best way forward with SAP HANA and the SAP BusinessObjects BI suite

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What We’ll Cover

• Introduction – BI Strategy and Business Demands• Visualization – SAP’s current BI strategy• Performance – SAP BW and SAP HANA• Cost and complexity – Improving visualization/performance• New Technology – Cloud and mobility• Way forward – Future architecture/landscape • Wrap-up

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Introduction — A Short History

• SAP’s BI offering started over 15 years ago with SAP Business Warehouse It has evolved from data modeling and integration to

performance acceleration, live data, big data at a glance, and real-time decisions

• Now, new functionalities are possible with SAP’s products, such as Fraud Management ...

• Besides modeling, SAP BW’s front end has evolved from its own BEx suite over to SAP BusinessObjects front ends and to new, recently released tools

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Your BI Strategy Depends on Different Factors

• Your BI strategy depends on different influencing factors

Business Demands

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Business Demands

• Business requirements are loosely linked to your BI strategy• Business does not determine what tools to choose, but rather

which types of reporting are required, such as dashboards, ad-hoc reporting …

• Example: Users request a dashboard with a pie chart, bar chart, and a detailed overview in a table underneath. This can be done in various tools, such as Web Intelligence, Dashboards …

Business demands determine the types of tools required, not the choice of tools themselves

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What We’ll Cover


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SAP Strategy — Recap on Positioning

• With the arrival of the new tools, such as Lumira, the positioning at SAP has adapted to three different orientations

Agile Visualization Dashboards and Apps ReportingLumira SAP BusinessObjects Design

Studio Web Intelligence

SAP BusinessObjects Explorer SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards (Xcelsius®)

Crystal Reports

SAP BusinessObjects AnalysisSAP Predictive Analysis

These slides do not cover SAP’s complete positioning and do not include the different audiences

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SAP Strategy — Recap on Positioning — Sources

* Relational .unx on BW** With SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio 1.2, only single source, relational .unx universes on Microsoft SQL or Sybase IQ as underlying database are supported

Self-Service Dashboard & Apps ReportingLumira Explorer Analysis

Office/OLAP

Design Studio

Dash-boards

Web Intelli-gence

Crystal Reports

SAP BW + * + ++ ++ + + +

Relational source

++ ++ 0 + ** ++ ++ ++

OLAP sources

+ + ++ (OLAP)

0 (office)0 + + +

Flat files ++ + 0 0 ++ ++ +SAP HANA ++ ++ ++ ++ + ++ +

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SAP’s BI Path

• SAP BI’s portfolio has evolved with the different versions and merger with Business Objects, influencing the front end for your SAP BW environment

• Also, a shift in technology, e.g., from Flash to HTML5, changed the preferred options for front-end tools

BEx Analyzer Analysis (Office/OLAP)

Visual Composer

Dashboards (Xcelsius)

Design Studio

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SAP Strategy — Dashboarding Recommendation

Dashboards today?

BW or HANA?

Design Studio

Continue Dashboards

BW or HANA?

Design Studio

Mobile?

Dashboards or Design

Studio

Consider using Design Studio for Dashboarding, as it is well-suited for mobile and for HANA and SAP investments

Y

YN

Y

N

N

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SAP Strategy — Agile Visualization

• SAP Lumira is the newest product in the Agile Visualization category

• It is meant for self-service and requires a client installation• Easy graph and storyboards produced by drag and drop• Today, .unx access to BW;

later, BICS integration• Embedded in SAP Business

Suite and Fiori

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SAP BW Reporting Tools

• Main focus of SAP NetWeaver® BW 7.0 was the new Web reporting functionalities, the more uniform BEx Query Designer, and the drag and drop feature in BEx Analyzer

• With the merger with Business Objects, the focus shifted to using more of the user friendly SAP BusinessObjects front ends

• Analysis Office was developed as a premium alternative to BEx Analyzer, and is also more user friendly than BEx Analyzer

• BEx development , but still supported (SAP Standard support strategy)

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SAP BW Reporting Tool — Way Forward

• Query Designer remains and BEx queries can be consumed with BI 4.x tools

• Best way forward

BEx Analyzer

Design Studio

Analysis Office (& OLAP)

BEx Web/Web Application Designer

Conversion of BEx Workbooks to Analysis Office possible as of rel. 1.4

Conversion may be planned, but likely no 1:1 conversion possible

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Dashboards — Migrate?

• SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards (formerly Xcelsius) is not end of life, but will enter maintenance

• New features and functionalities will become available in Design Studio

• It is possible to integrate Dashboards into Design Studio• Migration from Dashboards to Design Studio is on SAP’s planning• Dashboards is not designed for higher volumes• Migration from Web Application Designer is not possible• Design Studio does not have the same rich catalog of graphs as

in Dashboards (yet?)

Migration is possible, but is not mandatory, and currently no migration automation is present

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Relation Models in SAP BW with Web Intelligence

• Sometimes, OLAP models/star schemas are not needed or suitable Example: SAP Human Resources contains more master data-

based models

• In SAP BW, up to now, relational modeling was limited to InfoSets (new feature foreseen in further slide)

Employee Wife

Child

Child

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Relation Models in SAP BW with Web Intelligence (cont.) • BW InfoSets have limitations, such as limited join options, but

most important is the performance impact• Creating multi-source Universes on SAP BW objects allows you to

go beyond the limitations of BW InfoSets• With multi-source Universes, some BW features are not possible,

examples: BW Hierarchies Restricted Key Figures

For Relation Models in SAP BW, prefer Universes instead of BW InfoSets because of extensive functionality

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What We’ll Cover


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Performance — SAP Business Warehouse and HANA

• SAP Business Warehouse included performance improvements such as caching, pre-calculation, and aggregates

• With BW 7.0, BW Accelerator was introduced for improved reporting performance Data is replicated in BW Accelerator

• Now, there is SAP HANA accelerating SAP BW for Reporting, but also Data Loading and Planning

• But ... SAP HANA does not only accelerate SAP BW; it also accelerates the SAP Business Suite (operational)

BWA

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SAP HANA Rocks Your SAP BW

• SAP HANA shakes up some fundamental concepts that have been part of SAP BW for over 15 years!

• On the SAP BW roadmap (now, 7.40, and beyond): InfoCube models changed significantly by removing the

dimension tables Removed the need for creating InfoObjects for DSOs by

providing Open ODS View (field-based modeling) Get rid of 60 character limitation (been there since beginning)

Many fundamental changes and enhanced features only available when SAP BW is run on SAP HANA

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SAP HANA Effect on SAP BW

• Further enhancements and features of SAP BW on HANA: Optimized DSO activation Optimized Integrated Planning Faster reporting performance by in-memory, column store, and

parallel processing Relational modeling with CompositeProviders (see further) Smart Data Access (combining non-HANA DB’s) …

Deploying SAP HANA as a DB for SAP BW might be a quick win, as well as an opportunity to learn the technology and remove old SAP BW boundaries

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SAP HANA Effect on SAP BW — Data Warehousing• Within SAP BW, the recommended data warehousing

concept was LSA • This changed into LSA++ with SAP BW on

SAP HANA Opening layers Removing redundant persistence Includes non-BW objects

Source: SAP

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SAP HANA Effect on SAP BW — Data Warehousing (cont.)• Within SAP BW, do you still

need InfoCubes? No, if only for

performance reasons Yes, for Planning, non-

cumulatives, complex logic in transformations, and external interfaces that only support InfoCubes

Aggregates or BWA index

BEx Query

ClassicBW

BW onHANA

BW onHANA

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Relational Models in SAP BW with SAP BI and HANA

• SAP BW powered by SAP HANA enables more features of relational modeling by means of CompositeProviders

BEx Query BEx Query

CompositeProviders offer better performance than BW InfoSets, as they push down logic to the SAP HANA DB

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Operational Intelligence

• Does the Business demand multiple loads per day into your SAP BW system? On a daily basis or only during, e.g., closing?

• With SAP Business Warehouse, various options are possible to aspire to operational reporting, such as: Multiple loads per day, but not real-time, and a lot of resource

consumption during business hours on source and BW system Real-Time Data Acquisition (RDA), permanent resource

consumption, close to real-time, only supported DataSources VirtualProvider, typically for low volumes, few users

SAP BW’s ODP is the only DataProvider that provides close to real-time reporting, but requires a good performance

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Operational Intelligence — Suite on HANA

• Running SAP Business Suite on SAP HANA allows for combining the OLTP and OLAP into one system

Enables simplification/lower TCO

Enbles simple and real-time reporting

Not purely about performance

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Operational Intelligence with SAP HANA Live

• HANA Live views allows reporting: On all data available in ECC/CRM/ … system Which is always available (no data loads that can fail) And up to date (real-time) data Available with flexible BI reporting tools (not only ALV, …) And are extensible

• HANA views allow reporting: Across different domains Across different systems

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SAP HANA Live — What Does It Mean?

• Many SAP customers have deployed SAP BW because it came with Business Content, so you did not need to build it from scratch

• SAP HANA Live is the Business Content for your Suite on HANA environment

• It provides you with predefined models on top of your SAP tables and provides different building blocks also creating abstraction from the physical SAP tables

Like SAP BW’s Business Content, SAP HANA Live gives you a quick start to start building your reporting models

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SAP HANA Effect on SAP Business Intelligence

• SAP BusinessObjects BI Suite runs on its own BI platform and is the recommended front end for your SAP BW and other environments

• Even this BI Suite is influenced by SAP HANA Initially, only by providing connectivity to the SAP HANA

platform from the various tools And in the next step, by running (some) BI applications natively

on the SAP HANA platform (as alternative to BI Platform) SAP Design Studio SAP Lumira

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SAP HANA and Explorer

• Explorer is a very powerful tool to put to use in combination with SAP HANA, as it offers: Good performance (HANA) Exploration through filtering Simple dashboarding Self-service

• Explorer seems to be underestimated and under-used, but with SAP HANA connected, it can really unlock your data and get new insights

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What We’ll Cover


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Cost and Complexity

• Improving Performance and Visualization often comes with hardware and/or software costs

• But ... Ever wondered about the other costs? Cost to set up BW data flow compared to developing with

HANA views? No data (re)loading Easier remodeling No load monitoring Always available and up-to-date

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Cost and Complexity (cont.)

• But ... Ever wondered about the other costs? (cont.) Lead times to provide reports to end user More stovepipes/islands developed in Excel or other

applications Lifecycle management and data loads in each system

Cost of lack of information Impact on decisions (strategic, sales, ...) Competition

• Performance is more than just accelerating reports; it also has a business impact and influences the BI footprint in your organization

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ClassicDB

SAP BW

SAP ECC

Simplifying Your Complex Landscape with SAP HANA

BI Reporting

SAP Tables

MultiProvider

BEx Query

DataSource HANADBSAP Tables

HANA Live Views

SAP ECC

BI Reporting

HANA LandscapeClassic Landscape

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SAP HANA Live — Simplification — TCO

• Of course, it is not that black and white of a story• You can bring operational reporting back where it belongs

Customer A Customer B• Depending on your landscape, the share of operational data will

be higher

SAP BW SAP BW

Operational

Analytical

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SAP HANA Live — What If I Have an SAP BW System?• SAP BW More for strategical and tactical reporting Planning Consolidation, harmonization, cross-system integration

• SAP HANA Live More for operational reporting Where real-time data is important Lightweight modeling and self-service reporting

SAP BW and SAP HANA Live are complementary in many cases. SAP HANA Live alone can suffice for ECC operational reporting only.

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SAP BW on HANA

SAP BW Schema SAP HANA Schema(s)

HANA Analytical View

InfoCube TransientProvider

Virtual Provider

Query Query Query

Composite Provider

SAP HANA

SAP NetWeaver BW — SAP HANA Interoperability

• Combining SAP BW with SAP HANA (Live) Use in CompositeProviders

and/or MultiProviders TransientProvider based on

HANA Model For ad hoc scenarios No InfoObjects required

VirtualProvider based on HANA Model Flexible integration of HANA

data with BW Objects Security handled by BW

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What We’ll Cover


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New Technology

• As new technology, we mainly see: SAP HANA (covered already) Mobility Cloud

• Cloud enables: You to go further in TCO and cost But also enables fast deployments of new tools without high

investments upfront• Cloud solutions are available for (amongst others): SAP HANA Lumira

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Mobility?

• Do you want to deploy your reports and Dashboards on mobile devices? If yes: Then probably your existing reports and dashboards are not

suitable for mobile devices, as they were designed for regular screen size

Redesign these for mobile devices in the best fit tools, such as Design Studio and Web Intelligence

Providing information on a mobile platform requires a good performance

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What We’ll Cover


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Entire IT Architecture Should Be Considered

• Besides SAP’s BI roadmap, it is important to think about your entire future roadmap of your architecture

• Including SAP HANA into your roadmap heavily influences your BI tools of choice

• Putting mobile BI on your roadmap also influences your choice of BI tools

BI

HANA?Mobility?

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Greenfield — Most Easy Choice

• Suite on HANA, as it offers OLTP and OLAP in one platform TCO reduction Benefit of real-time reporting

• Implement SAP BW if you need to consolidate from different systems and with complex logic

• Start using the tools Lumira, Design Studio, Analysis Office• For Web-based reporting, use Web Intelligence

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Current SAP Investments

• Moving to SAP HANA is possible by performing a database migration of your SAP Business Suite or SAP BW system

• Can be done gradually By carving out content from SAP BW and bringing it to HANA

(Live) reporting By using a side-car scenario to start reporting with HANA Live

on replicated data • Rollout of the latest BI tools can also be done gradually and some

tools offer a migration already or it is planned

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SAP BI and SAP HANA

• SAP BI and SAP HANA go hand in hand• SAP BI is well suited for HANA reporting• If SAP HANA is on your radar, it will influence your BI strategy,

not only for the front-end tools, but also your Data Warehouse

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What We’ll Cover


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Where to Find More Information

• http://service.sap.com/roadmaps * Follow Product and Solution Roadmaps Analytics

• www.saphana.com More info on BW on SAP HANA

• http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-35096 More info on SAP BW 7.40 and SAP HANA features

* Requires login credentials to the SAP Service Marketplace

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7 Key Points to Take Home

• If you think about SAP HANA, then include this in your BI Strategy• Focus on SAP’s development areas, such as Design Studio and

Lumira• Choosing mobile will direct you to the tools more fit for this, such

as Design Studio• Besides Query Designer, do not expect major new functionalities

in the BW BEx Suite• SAP BW and HANA can be a perfect match and are

complementary• If you do not move today to the newly released tools, follow them

closely, as they evolve quite quickly• SAP HANA comes not only with a cost, but can also save costs

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Your Turn!

How to contact me:Luc Boodts

[email protected]

Please remember to complete your session evaluation

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Disclaimer

SAP, R/3, mySAP, mySAP.com, SAP NetWeaver®, Duet®, PartnerEdge, and other SAP products and services mentioned herein as well as their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP AG in Germany and in several other countries all over the world. All other product and service names mentioned are the trademarks of their respective companies. Wellesley Information Services is neither owned nor controlled by SAP.

Defining a sustainable BI strategy that leverages your current investments and aligns with SAP’s...

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